Compiled by PAUL HUGHES
ittle League can be big business. Indeed, the two have much in common.
To begin with, Little League is a brand. It’s a registered trademark. You pay to use it. Rates depend on the number of teams in a league. My son’s league in Orange has 28, and the league paid about $3,000. This also gets you liability insurance.
So Little League’s something like a franchise with a defined geography. If you live south of this line or west of that one, you’re in,that is, you buy from,this league. Period.
Locally there are six Little League districts in Orange County, with 70 to 75 leagues and 25,000 to 30,000 kids playing. Add in families, and a hundred thousand people are involved each spring Saturday here.
Like businesses, leagues typically seek closer relationships with other local businesses,call it cross marketing. Sponsors get mentioned in the annual program or DVD, maybe get a banner on the fence, space to troll their wares during games and the like. OK, tame and common stuff.
Fees Begin
Then the nickel-and-diming of customers,parents and families,begins. This is my son’s and my first year, and in the first few weeks, we’ve gotten new and regular announcements of this charge and that fee,the team bat, the photo package upgrade, your share of the team banner, a coach’s gift, raffle tickets, pizza party. The fees came as fast as groundballs in a game of pepper.
We heard some leagues even over-schedule parent volunteers in the snack shop so mom and dad will “buy out” of it for $25 a pop.
Then I realized the nickel-and-diming was clumsiness, not profiteering.
Because nobody gets rich here. Leagues are nonprofit deals, both literally and figuratively. Ours does the whole season for $60,000,less than my buddy makes teaching.
“People don’t realize what it takes,” our league president says. “Uniforms, trophies, yearbooks, photos, equipment, field maintenance. We have a water bill.”
Voices trail at this point, then build again.
“It’s staggering. We pay for a trash bin on site,” she says.
By the way, there ain’t no 80/20 rule here. It’s more like 90/10 at best, with 10% or less of the adults involved in the work.
And don’t even mention the bad checks the leagues get, or the annually new boards,with neophytes who have to learn everything each year,and low-income area leagues that have to make the same basic things happen as leagues in ritzier burgs.
One local coach said simply, “It takes money to run a league, and a team.” In addition, paid registration and other fees often help to cover the costs of kids who can’t pay.
Well-heeled customers subsidizing ones paying less? Smells like business to me. But it doesn’t happen here to boost the bottom line.
“We never want to turn people away,” a league official says.
Same Deal
The baby depression and the bad economy have hit Little League in precisely the same ways they’re hitting for-profit enterprises. ABC News Radio said one Florida Little League is down 10% this year. That league’s president likened it to unemployment and foreclosure rates in the area,also at 10%.
Forty players simply didn’t show, he told ABC, because “families are looking for jobs and don’t want to burn gas” to play baseball. His sponsorship has plummeted as well.
Meanwhile, according to the Little League Web site, 58 leagues in the country are currently in default on their fees and are ineligible for tournament play.
So maybe becoming more like a business in every respect isn’t the answer here. Businesses aren’t doing too hot,while Little League’s labor of love is yeomen’s work every weekend.
While it’s an average league shuffling along in apology mode,begging for help from parents and money from sponsors,and becoming more effective and efficient in the process, let’s not bring in the MBAs and accountants.
OK, maybe the accountants. Let’s change the nickel-and-dime vibe.
Because while it’s common to say Little League is “for the kids”,and it should be,you wonder what we’re teaching our tykes when information comes piecemeal, schedules are constantly in flux and adults let other adults be way more mediocre,one hopes,than is permitted in real life.
Or real business.
And we want them to be disciplined, on the ball fields and off?
Let’s hope they’re not paying too much attention to us while on the red dirt diamonds of their dreams.
No, I don’t want this to be a business, and the kids “customers,” and the game a product.
Or think of it this way.
Maybe the product isn’t baseball, but fun. And fun is free, whatever it costs.
Hughes is a freelance writer from Orange.
